One Year Of Gardening In a Pandemic

 One year ago today, New Zealand went into Level 4 lockdown. It's been on my mind all day. It's been colouring my thoughts for weeks, as the weather shifts and we move into the first days of Fall. The thing about gardening is it connects you with the seasons. I love this about gardening, but right now it's taking me right back there, to what it was like. This time last year, there was a crispness in the air. The most of the cicaidas had quit their song but the crickets were still playing their quietly glittering notes. A few leaves on our sugar maple turning red. The tomatoes were dying back as the nights turned colder. March 25th 2021 was a beautiful sunny Fall day just like today, except everything was changing.

Gardening was one of the few things that was unchanged in my world during the first lockdown. It was a great comfort to me. The veggies still needed harvesting. The new seedlings still needed planting out. I was really lucky to have just bought my Fall seedlings the week before. My plants were indifferent to the pandemic. They went on growing and flowering and photosynthesising. The honey bees and bumble bees still visited my calendula flowers. My little veggie garden in the back, secluded from the rest of the back yard, was my sanctuary. I could loose myself in the simple task of weeding a garden bed, my senses filled with smells of rosemary and thyme, the sunlight and cool breeze on my skin, the sound of birdsong, and things would feel normal for a little while.

We here in New Zealand have been pretty fortunate in this pandemic. But a year ago, we didn't know what was coming. And look, friends, it's still been a pretty rough twelve months. I am American originally, so I've had all of that weighing on me, too. Gardening has been a source of stability and comfort through it all. The world of human concerns may feel like it's through the looking glass, but a tomato is still a tomato. Seeds still need sewing, beds still need weeding. Summer still turns to Fall.

I have my new Koanga Garden's seeds going in my improvised seed trays; I finally bought a few more:

That's my Fall brassicas all labelled in the middle: collards, broccoli, and mustard. I must label these because they are in the same family, and start out looking the same (or so I thought; the purple mustard actually started out purple). My very fancy labels are made with popsicle sticks and sharpie marker. On the far left are my latest carrot seedlings, about ready to plant out. On the far right, my rocket seedlings, also ready to plant. I've got space for them now too, I just need to prepare the bed. They are going in the spot where my monster zucchini was. As is always the case, it finally succumbed to white powdery mildew. But not before producing the biggest zucchini yet. Actually it was probably a marrow, which is just a zucchini you left to grow too long. We had a couple of rainy days and I kept forgetting to pick it, and well, it doesn't take long for them to get away from you. I was a little bit proud. Here it is on my kitchen scale - 2.6kgs!

We've put it in eggplant parmasean, zucchini pancakes, and I shreaded three cups to freeze for making zucchini bread later. That has left approximately a fourth of it still in the fridge; I think I will roast it which is what you are meant to do with marrows traditonally.

It is also time for seed saving. I left four rocket to go to seed this Summer because they weren't in anyone's way, and now I have hundreds if not thousands of seeds. This is way more than anyone could need, but I love seed gathering. Popping the tiny seeds out of the dry brittle pods is so satisfying. I think the pods themselves are just beautiful:

I will probably donate the extra seeds to a local community garden. But I am tempted to try growing some of them for microgreens.

So this is Fall once again; the seasons turn and I turn with them. The pandemic is still with us. The future is still uncertain. And you will still find me in the garden on a sunny afternoon, peacefully weeding the herb bed, and pausing to admire the bees.